Rando-B-Gone: Final Fantasy IX's No Encounters Mode

Ooh they’re awful, those random encounters. There you are, walking down the hill, minding your own business, when someone jumps up in your face, yelling “I’m the queen of the lemurs, grab your tutu for the raisin taco dance party!” Horrible little oiks.

If you’re interested in the upcoming PC port of Final Fantasy IX [official site] but dread being set upon by Rando Calrissian, Marlon Rando, and all their pals – JRPG staples, the lot of ’em – then you can relax. More details on the port have come in, including that it’ll let you turn off random encounters.

When word of the port first came, it was only confirmed for Japan and most details came from wonky auto-translation. But look, now we have a shiny Steam page with screenshots and words saying that yes, it’s definitely coming our way too, and with these new features:

Achievements

Seven game boosters including high speed and no encounter modes.

Autosave

High-definition movies and character models.

As you can see clearly in the screenshots, yep, the character models are a lot fancier but no, those level backgrounds are certainly not. The clash is a bit weird but hey, ‘s all right isn’t it? Can live with it, I’m sure.

I’m not opposed to the idea of random encounters, but do find in too many RPGs that they come too frequently and I end up skipping them. Folks who did play FFIX, how would you rate it on the randometer?

Final Fantasy IX is due in “early 2016”. Hey, that’s now! That’s right now! Is it out? A: no.